The following article by Daniel J. Tearpock was initially published in the GeoLOGIC, a quarterly publication of Subsurface Consultants and Associates, LLC.
We invite you to give it a read, and then return to these questions: What steps does your organization take to mitigate the risks of relying too heavily on workstation technology? How do you bring freshly graduated geoscientists and engineers up to speed on tried and true best practices?
“IT'S PEOPLE NOT WORKSTATIONS”
It is a known fact that “People – Not Workstations” find oil and gas. However, there is no doubt that today's workstations and computers are powerful tools for use in our quest for finding and developing oil and gas resources. Workstation technology allows:
1. Effective integration and analysis of available data;
2. Fast application of alternate ideas;
3. Global or remote site integration;
4. Multidisciplinary integration.
While acknowledging the benefits of workstation technology, do not overlook the danger of relying too heavily on these tools. In the hands of an interpreter inadequately trained in the fundamentals of geoscience and engineering, who is unfamiliar with the application of long-standing industry accepted practices, one can arrive at a wrong and very costly conclusion at the push of a button, resulting in another dry hole or even worse.
Have we learned from the past? A successful oil and gas exploration and development program cannot exist in the long-term on luck and serendipity. There are many factors that underlie success. However, I don't think there would be too much disagreement that long-term success is the result of the application of sound geoscience principles by knowledgeable, well trained interpreters. Interpreters must have a sound background in structural geology, stratigraphy, sedimentology and other related disciplines for the tectonic setting being worked. After all, the interpreter must know when a computer-generated map makes geologic sense and when the result is garbage!!!
